Luke Halpin

Luke Austin Halpin was born in Astoria, Queens, New York, the youngest of three children of Helen Joan (Szczepanski) and Eugene A. Halpin. His father was of Irish and German descent, and his maternal grandparents were Polish. Luke's acting career started when a music teacher encouraged him to try out acting. Luke turned out to be a natural; his film debut was in the Studio One in Hollywood (1948) episode, entitled "Miracle at Potter's Farm", starring Natalie Wood. His performance was well-received, and when he was in his mid-teens, he had already appeared in many TV series and in film as well.

Days before his 14th birthday acted opposite Broadway luminaries Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel in a television production of Samuel Beckett's acclaimed stage play, "Waiting for Godot", broadcast on Play of the Week (1959).

At age 13, he sang and danced with Mary Martin in Peter Pan (1960).

Apart from the dolphins who 'played' Flipper, he was the only actor to act in all the Flipper related productions starting with the Flipper movie (filmed 1962), its sequel and the 3 seasons of the TV series (ending in 1967) playing the 12-year-old to 18-year-old Sandy Ricks.

His big break when he was cast in Flipper (1963), which co-starred Chuck Connors.

In March 1964, days before his 17th birthday, Luke appeared as a contestant on To Tell the Truth (1956) (in which one real person with something interesting in their background is accompanied on stage by two impostors pretending to be the person in question; a celebrity panel question all three and try and choose the real person). One of the 4 celebrity panelists was Orson Bean and he disqualified himself because he knew Luke when they acted together 7 years earlier on a Studio One TV show called "Christmas Surprise". In the end 2 of the 3 other panelists correctly selected the real Luke. Only Peggy Cass was fooled. When Bean was asked how he knew Luke, he described him as "a splendid actor".

In 1968 when he was 21, Luke played the part of a student radical called Bo in If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969), who pursues a 19 year old girl, Shelly Ferguson, whose parents Fred and Edna, have joined a coach tour around Europe expressly to get their daughter away from a boyfriend back in the U.S. Edna was played by Peggy Cass, who was a regular on To Tell the Truth (1956) in the its heyday, and was one of the four panelists when Luke appeared on TTTT in March 1964 in between the filming of the "Flipper's New Adventure" movie and the first season of the "Flipper" TV series. She was the only panelist to be fooled, selecting one of the impostors.

He was to direct the film "Where is My Rainbow," to be filmed in Macon, Georgia, in January 1981, produced by Rainbow Film Productions, but it never materialized.

Lives in Florida, where he works as a pilot and marine technician for a film production company. [2005]

In 2015 it was announced he has stage IV head and neck cancer.

In 2016 it was reported that he was in remission for cancer but was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.